The vehicle hood is generally a metal lid over the engine compartment and has its rear end connected to the vehicle body by hood hinges.
Nowadays, the regulation on pedestrian protection mandates that the vehicle hood be configured to attenuate injury to the pedestrian when the pedestrian is struck by the vehicle and fallen on the hood.
In order to satisfy the regulation, systems have been proposed for forcibly raising the hinged rear end of the hood in response to or immediately prior to the vehicle impacting the pedestrian, thus allowing the hood to deform downward and buffer collision impact of the pedestrian.
The hood lifting structure is typically performed with a hydraulic actuator or a pyrotechnic actuator using the explosion force for rapidly lifting the heavy hood.
However, for lifting the hood using the actuator, a mechanical structure is required to convert a linear motion of the actuator into an elevation force of the hood. This structure should be compact in configuration and facilitate the assembly and maintenance thereof.